Agent Provocateur

Secret Agent

Haute Sex on Oak Street

We just talked to your girlfriend. She knows times are tough, so she's not expecting much for the
holidays. Good thing we know a place that excels in nothing much.

Introducing Agent Provocateur, the first Chicago boutique for the upscale London-based lingerie
brand, now open in a subterranean lair on Oak Street.

Agent's black-and-pink boudoir interior, all smoky mirrors and rose-patterned carpet, is like the repressed
Anglo-Saxon collective id materialized in retail form. As you browse the skimpy collection of tastefully
sexy robes, fishnets and thongs—each bearing a woman's name (the Monika, the Joan, the
Naomi...bringing back a few memories?)—things appear as well-mannered as your average Gold Coast
pajama party.

But as you start to scrape below the silky surface, you'll soon find a few more titillating pieces of
expression: that Swarovski-tipped retractable riding crop not suitable for equestrianism (at least not the
kind on ESPN2), a silk blindfold with perhaps the naughtiest words ever committed to pink script, and
silk-tasseled handcuffs guaranteed not to rattle the bedposts.